My Little Pwny: FRAGing is Magic is a custom mod for Steve Jackon Game's fast paced board game, FRAG.
Frag is a fast paced, light-on-rules board game based on computer first-person shooters.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a cartoon targeted towards young girls that teaches valuable lessons about friendship and has picked up a fan base among adult males.
When you combine the two, you get My Little Pwny: FRAGing is Magic.

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Monday, October 28, 2013

Aw, ponyfeathers...

Holy bucking Tartarus, it's been over a year since any of us updated this blog! It isn't that we've ceased working on this project or that (speaking for myself, at least) interest in continuing has been lost. It's more that the vast majority of our discussions and build modifications occur on our Facebook group page and never find their way here. Believe me when I say I'm really sorry about that! Hopefully I'll remember to post all the crazy shenanigans over on this outlet, too!

Anyway, just like the last time an update was posted here, we did run
FRAG at FAN:dom 2013, though the layout of this year's con made finding
space to play far more difficult than last year. Regardless, games were
played, characters were tested, and modifications were made. I won't be
covering the "finished" builds that were played, as they've already gotten a lot of playtesting and I was only really paying attention to the builds that showed necessary modification. More to follow after the break.

Rarity

Yeah, this was the big one to come out of the weekend's games. For the longest time, I've been worried that Rarity was overpowered. I'd chalked up my wins with Rarity--commanding wins, at that--to luck of the draw and the kindness of the dice gods. Still, I couldn't discount that I almost always found myself tanking more damage than should be reasonably expected for a character with 1 Health. The game we ran on Friday was no different: with nothing but an Enhanced Medpack and a Pot of Coffee, Rarity was able to tank consecutive 12d and 5d damage, which eventually led to her fragging her attacker on her next turn. Granted, a 12d attack isn't a guaranteed kill, especially against a target that has decent gadgets in-hand. Still, the only 12d weapon in the game has an absurdly high kill rate against anything with 2 Health or less, so a 1 Health character surviving not only the initial damage but 5d in knockback as well is going too far. Hence, we decided on the following mods:

Armored: reduced the Health check bonus from +2d6 to +1d6.

Know the Weak Spot: no longer an automatic success. Must roll 1d6; succeeds on a 5 or 6.

Based on the limited data gathered from the Saturday games, this nerf may have done the trick. Rarity wasn't an auto-frag like she was in our earliest builds, but Armored no longer makes her the impossible tank she'd normally been in my runs with the un-nerfed build. I wasn't able to test Know the Weak Spot, as nobody Rarity attacked equipped armor, but my own experience tells me that it should be fair to everyone else. After all, Rarity is perfectly capable of eating through armor with most of the weapons in the game without automatically ignoring all armor. At any rate, I think this build might finally keep Rarity from destroying all the things.

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite builds of the Fallout: Equestria: Project Horizons characters. Funny coincidence that she's by far my favorite character from the novel itself... Anyway, this might be the first Alicorn build that's completely balanced from creation. She played well in my first run, and her second was no different. I might still worry a bit about her Telekinesis possibly being a bit too powerful thanks to her high health, her lower accuracy makes it less murderous. Anyway, I'm very close to calling this build complete, as I've yet to encounter any major problems.

Oh, this build. Before writing this post, I didn't even realize that this build wasn't posted anywhere, despite all the effort Zach and I have been putting into it. At any rate, it's one of the newest builds, based on the background character Lucky Clover and generally built to mimic the Anarchy skill of the Mechromancer from Borderlands 2. It requires a great deal of luck to make use of any of his abilities, as they depend on the character rolling lots of doubles or triples. However, if you are pretty lucky, he can turn out to be a surprisingly solid tank. Too solid, at times. We did end up nerfing his Lucky Dodge ability to only allow it to be activated while no armor is equipped. The build also still requires more extensive playtesting, as Zach's the only one to run it thus far. Anyway, he's built, and he's ready to be played, so feel free to run him and post your results.

OK, this isn't actually a legal build (every character must have a minimum of 1 in every stat, so a character with 0 Accuracy, while amusing, isn't possible), but it exists and was played. Honestly, I like the build. She's got the health to hold out against snipers like Rarity, the speed to not suffer much from hit-and-run characters like RD and Cheerilee, and while she doesn't have accuracy, she's got a nice selection of close-range debuffs and decent attacks. Jack (her creator) wants to add a fourth ability to her (if we're gonna make an illegal build, why the heck not), but I really don't think she needs it. She can't actually fire a weapon unless she picks up the HUD Helmet or Gaming Fez, but her primary 5d attack combined with her ability to keep her prey from outrunning her is a lethal combination. The only way she doesn't get constant frags is if she gets potshot by a sniper or goes up against a high health melee character like AJ. I'm definitely of the mindset to leave her as-is.

Anyway...yeah. That's all the untested or still-in-development characters that got a run at FAN:dom. Wish I could've gotten more characters tested (like Trixie) but such is life. Hopefully I can convince some people to run a few games every now and again here in Pensacola. As for updating this blog, I will try to remember to post a weekly (or probably bi-weekly) update of new characters and happenings. No promises, though; my mind tends to wander every time I write up a new blog, and there are so my other things (that mostly consist of Tumblr or Facebook) that become vitally important while I'm trying to write. But I will at least try.